“I hope I didn’t frighten you?” I stammered out at last. “I have no idea what I said. I was dreaming.” “You said ‘_Uggug indeed!_’” the young lady replied, with quivering lips that _would_ curve themselves into a smile, in spite of all her efforts to look grave. “At least—you didn’t _say_ it—you _shouted_ it!” “I’m very sorry,” was all I could say, feeling very penitent and helpless. “She _has_ Sylvie’s eyes!” I thought to myself, half-doubting whether, even now, I were fairly awake. “And that sweet look of innocent wonder is all Sylvie’s, too. But Sylvie _hasn’t_ got that calm resolute mouth—nor that far-away look of dreamy sadness, like one that has had some deep sorrow, very long ago——” And the thick-coming fancies almost prevented my hearing the lady’s next words. “If you had had a ‘Shilling Dreadful’ in your hand,” she proceeded, “something about Ghosts—or Dynamite—or Midnight Murder—one could understand it: those things aren’t worth the shilling, unless they give one a Nightmare. But really—with only a _medical treatise_, you know——” and she glanced, with a pretty shrug of contempt, at the book over which I had fallen asleep. Her friendliness, and utter unreserve, took me aback for a moment; yet there was no touch of forwardness, or boldness, about the child—for child, almost, she seemed to be: I guessed her at scarcely over twenty—all was the innocent frankness of some angelic visitant, new to the ways of earth and the conventionalisms—or, if you will, the barbarisms—of Society. “Even so,” I mused, “will _Sylvie_ look and speak, in another ten years.” “You don’t care for Ghosts, then,” I ventured to suggest, “unless they are really terrifying?” “Quite so,” the lady assented. “The regular Railway-Ghosts—I mean the Ghosts of ordinary Railway-literature—are very poor affairs. I feel inclined to say, with Alexander Selkirk, ‘Their tameness is shocking to me’! And they never do any Midnight Murders. They couldn’t ‘welter in gore,’ to save their lives!” “‘Weltering in gore’ is a very expressive phrase, certainly. Can it be done in _any_ fluid, I wonder?” “I think _not_,” the lady readily replied—quite as if she had thought it out, long ago. “It has to be something _thick_. For instance, you might welter in bread-sauce. That, being _white_, would be more suitable for a Ghost, supposing it wished to welter!” “You have a real good _terrifying_ Ghost in that book?” I hinted. “How _could_ you guess?” she exclaimed with the most engaging frankness, and placed the volume in my hands. I opened it eagerly, with a not unpleasant thrill (like what a good ghost-story gives one) at the ‘uncanny’ coincidence of my having so unexpectedly divined the subject of her studies. It was a book of Domestic Cookery, open at the article ‘Bread Sauce.’